This article is a review of WISH I WAS HERE.

“Are we going to bury him in the backyard with Whiskers?” Tucker (Pierce Gagnon) Writer-director-producer-star Zach Braff asks the right questions in his half-life crisis comedy-drama, but offers nothing of insight in answer. A decade on from the sublime (yet flawed) GARDEN STATE, the SCRUBS star has, after a sizable hiatus behind the camera, proven once again to have a striking eye for visual composition and movement; but has regressed as a writer to offer less insight into the human condition. One comes up short after panning for nuggets of wisdom in the stream of WISH I WAS HERE.

Stretching a very modest budget into something so handsome is no mean feat. Opening on astronaut Braff running in fear through a red world, accompanied by a robot pal, a cloaked figure in the distance provides the impetus for evasion. Snapping out of the scene into a suburban kitchen, Aidan Bloom (Braff) returns to the real world from a daydream. Greeting him is his lovely and loving family: Wife Sarah (Kate Hudson), young daughter Grace (Joey King) who they had straight out of university accidentally, and six-year old son Tucker. From THE INCREDIBLES playbook, the dynamics are similar (sans superpowers, natch). “If there’s a next time, I’ll do better,” Gabe (Mandy Patinkin)

Purpose, mortality, god, family, wrapped in varying scenarios of responsibility, WISH I WAS HERE turns its runtime to attempting to fathom. Floodgates have opened on Aidan, and force an entire reassessment of his life: - Pursuing his dream of acting professionally is as out of reach as it has ever been. Pressure for success mounts in proportion to the disillusionment Sarah feels in relation to her office drone water utilities career path, in service to being the sole breadwinner. - Gabe (Patinkin), Aidan’s father, announces, after an almost ritualistic verbal dress-down of filial lifestyle choices, that terminal cancer has returned. Experimental treatment has drained Gabe’s funds so that grandparental covering of school fees is no longer possible. - Noah (Josh Gad), Aidan’s younger brother, living in a trailer park overlooking the Californian coast, can’t seem to provide the emotional support required by older sibling. Disappointment has fuelled frustration-soaked malaise, and adversity proves the impetus for rethink. But the analysis on offer is trite and wallows in sentimentality. The more one considers WISH I WAS HERE, the more annoying the outcomes presented niggle. Narrative threads are wound up in a non-credible and unjustified movie-of-the-week bow. Psychological truth is absent. Contrast INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS for when aspiration and reality are on cruelly divergent paths to mesmerising effect. (Even post-coital GAME OF THRONES roleplaying can’t save.)

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